


Root and Branch

by athena_crikey



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Gen, Gore, Humour, Paternal Feels, Rebirth, Snark, Zagreus is loved even if he doesn't know it, h/c, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, takes place before the first successful escape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29864205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: He had almost hoped that he might just sink to the bottom, disappear without anyone noticing until he finds a way to best this bewitchment, this seedling in his heart. But no. He’s already been spotted, floating arse-up in the tide, by Hypnos.OR: Trapped between life and death, Zagreus witnesses a different side of his lord father.
Relationships: Hades & Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 146





	Root and Branch

Tartarus smells not of wholesome comforting woodsmoke, but of charred flesh and blackened bone. The darkness of Hades is lit only by gaping maws in the ground that sputter with flame, the air hot and desiccated and spark-strewn so that it burns in the lungs of all those lucky enough to still have them. 

As always, the pit is a crush of shades and creatures – pitiless, mindless guardians who thirst for blood and screams. Zagreus, alive and kicking, would seem to have both to offer.

At least, that’s what the Underworld’s prince imagines they believe as they charge at him with naked blades and fearsome whips, eager to flay the skin from his snow-white bones. He’s never seen snow, but he’s seen a lot of bone. He wondered for a while that they would show him, _him_ , crowned in flaming laurels and draped in Hades’ own colours, such disrespect. But then his lord father has never set an example of deference to his son. 

Zagreus has lost count of how many dozens of times he has made his escape attempt, how many times he has been cut down and sent back to his father’s house bathed in blood. It makes no difference. Sooner or later he will succeed, will be free of this pain, this darkness for good. Free of the father who makes no pretense at love, and of his realm of death. 

Today there are new horrors, a race of soot-covered creatures who carry twisted wooden pikes bursting with foul bud and short iron daggers; their feet are cloven and clatter on the broken flagstones, their thick hides reek of smoke and sweat. He beats off one, two, three, slicing them to pieces as they charge at him. But Tartarus is full of traps to confuse an unauthorized soul, of spiked floors and flaming pits and stone pillars that serve as blind spots. Somehow, one circles around behind him, and just as he hears the clip of its hoofs it drives its spear through his back to shatter bone and pierce straight into his heart. 

He falls heavily, the wooden pike sheering free, mortally wounded once more. He is slipping away, blood spilling out as his rent heart beats its last. This time feels different, though. He can feel something in his chest, small and solid as the cedarwood furniture that decorates his father’s house. His heart flutters around it, the strangeness jarring, unnatural. 

But he is fading, fading, so what does it matter? He will back home, soon. Soon…

***

Zagreus comes to himself in the river Styx. He knows it’s the Styx because it’s skin-warm, and because he can taste metallic blood in his nose and mouth. It slips down his throat, thick and hot, the feeling at once familiar and horrific. Like the mother’s milk he never knew, like the lullaby of wailing souls, like broken hearts and broken bones. 

He’s face-down in the Styx’s currents, drifting. His clothes are sopping and heavy, his weapon missing from his limp fingers. He goes to strike out, to kick to the surface, and doesn’t move. Doesn’t even twitch, body heavy and unresponsive. 

_ A strange twist, _ he thinks, willing his hand to fist and experiencing no change. He’s floating slowly through the rich liquid blood, his limbs trailing. _What sorcery is this?_ In his breast, made once again whole by his return to the Styx – as though it were a bringer of life, not death – he feels something shudder. A tiny seed snapping, buried deep within his still heart. Hard, rough roots press against the muscle of the organ, piercing the flesh. He can feel them wriggling like mealworms, eating into his carcass. They are draining his essence, the power of his being, robbing him of life before it can pool within him. He cannot move, cannot even breath. He is trapped between life and death. 

_ A new torture designed solely for me? Does Father truly prefer my lifeless body to an empty seat at the dinner table? _ As though they share meals, sup or drink or even talk together other than to trade barbs. 

Even without a heartbeat he still has sensation in his body, still feels it when he bumps up against the solid marble steps leading out of the Styx and into his father’s hall. Pathetic, humiliating for the Prince of Hades to return thus, washed up on the shore like a piece of driftwood ripped from a doomed ship. 

He refuses to accept his doom.

“What’s – hey – is that… Zagreus, that you?”

He had almost hoped that he might just sink to the bottom, disappear without anyone noticing until he finds a way to best this bewitchment, this seedling in his heart. But no. He’s already been spotted, floating arse-up in the tide, by Hypnos. 

He hears steps, soft on the woven carpet covering the house’s marble floors. “Everything okay there, Zagreus? My prince?” A soft touch on his shoulder, Hypnos’ hand warm against his cool skin. Alive without breath, as cold as death. The mortal who came up with that didn’t have the Prince of the Underworld in mind, but it fits all the same. “Zagreus, hey, you’re kind of freaking me out here. Zagreus?” He hears the quiet lap of liquid against skin, Hypnos wading into the Styx. He wonders if he took off his cloak, saved it from the wreck. He doubts it, not because Hypnos doesn’t value his robes of office (he would prefer torture to losing a single tuft of the rich silver edging) but because Hypnos values him higher. The children of Nyx, real and adopted, raised together in a litter like pups. 

He feels Hypnos roll him over, belly-up like a dead fish, catching his arm gently beneath Zagreus’s head and lifting him from the bloody current. His eyes are closed; he can’t see, but he can hear Hypnos’s breath coming soft and shallow. “Oh no. Oh no no no. Zagreus…” He sounds genuinely afraid, which is a bit strange; sorrow Zagreus could understand, or perhaps confusion. But fear?

Hypnos, for all his flightiness and primping, is a chthonic god. He is _strong_ , and he hauls Zagreus out of the Styx’ grasp without straining. Caries him onto dry land and lays him out on the carpet where the warm blood proceeds to form a damp puddle beneath his body. His corpse? Zagreus doesn’t know. Around him he can hear the shades whispering, the sound like wind through the tress of Elysium. He knew the shades long before he knew Elysium, of course.

“Silence there,” bellows a low, impatient tone from the end of the hall. _Oh Father, ever the charmer_ , thinks Zagreus. “What’s this blasted confabulation? Hypnos, break it up.” 

“Lord Hades – it’s Zagreus. Zagreus… he’s dead.” Hypnos’ voice is small but somehow it carries, like a vase cracking in a silent room. The sound of something breaking. 

_ Dead _ , thinks Zagreus? _Surely not. Use your eyes, Hypnos! I’m no shade, no empty shell. I’m bewitched, ensorcelled. Trapped!_ He feels the roots in his heart twisting, growing. Strangely there’s no pain, just a blunt pressure; uncomfortable, but nothing more. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” rumbles Father – _oh thanks a lot_ – “he’s beyond the reach of death. You cannot drown a fish – or a cockroach, for that matter,” he adds. 

Hypnos lays a hand on his chest, his palm dry, warm. It kindles the memory of a heartbeat, of blood pulsing through his body. But his heart remains still, a block of wood eaten away by termites. “My lord… his heart isn’t beating.”

The sound of his father’s footsteps pounding down the long hallway between his desk and the riverbed is like the pummeling of an axe against a besieged door, each stroke bringing awful future closer. Lord Hades is unique in his kingdom, the only Olympian in the Underworld, and even without sight Zagreus can feel the resonance of his power as he looms over him. He can smell the ichor that runs in his father’s veins, the intense and heady scent that cloys about all true gods. 

He’s expecting… he doesn’t rightly know what he’s expecting. A prod, perhaps, with Father’s sandal. A kick in the ribs would be like him, toes digging into Zagreus’ unguarded side. Instead he feels a calloused hand over his chest, the press of it nearly as large as his entire chest. Hot and heavy as a bear, and just as able to swipe your throat out if the notion takes him. “I don’t…” says Father, his voice not soft – it will never be that – but less. The wash of the waves after a storm – not that he’s ever seen the ocean. Achilles speaks of it sometimes. It sounds… unimaginable. 

_ Never heard you lost for words before, Father, _ thinks Zagreus, and while he wants to be amused in truth it’s unsettling. Father may not understand him at all, but he is ancient and learned. There are few things he doesn’t know, hasn’t seen before in his lifetime stretching back to the time of the Titans. How can he not know of Zagreus’s plight?

“Fetch Nyx. _Now_ ,” commands Father. The next moment Zagreus is scooped up – not by Hypnos’ lithe arms, but by his father. His bobbing head comes to rest against Hades’ shoulder, the smell of ichor almost overpowering. When he was young it had been a comfort to him, the scent of his sire, stronger than anyone else he knew. Now it’s naught but a reminder of everything he longs to escape. 

Except… except a part of him remembers some event long forgotten. Remembers his lord father holding him in his arms, his immense body folded around Zagreus’ fragile form like an impenetrable fortress. He remembers the security of it, the sense of calm. 

_ I’m a little old now to be carried around, don’t you think Father? Wouldn’t you rather have your servants do it, sweep the body away under a rug? A stricken prince is a sign of weakness, after all.  _ The rumours must already be spreading, his demise so public, so novel. The foundations of Hades trembling. 

But no. His absence would change nothing. Just as his mother’s name has been forgotten, so too would his be. 

He is laid down gently – _you_ , _gentle, Father? What joke is this?_ – in his bed. His down-filled pillows are soft beneath his head, his bedding scented with lavender from the old dying garden behind the house. That hot, ichor-rich hand pulls his hair back from his forehead, an unexpected caress. A moment later it’s gone as if it never was. 

“Zagreus! Oh child, what has befallen you?” Nyx runs into his chamber with light steps, her cloak rustling. 

“His feet do not burn,” says Father, voice astounded. “What power, god or mortal, could wrest his fire from him?” His anger quickly burns over his shock. _Anger is always quick to hand with you, is it not? Now ask how this is my fault. How my carelessness has besmirched your good name._

But Father says no more. Nyx’s hands push his chiton aside, baring his chest in full, her touch delicate as nightfall. As she passes her fingers over his skin he feels the twining growth in his heart stretch, its tendrils reaching out more rapidly. 

“There is a spell here,” she says slowly, her voice distant as she stretches out her powers. Nyx’s magic is great, although she is often overshadowed by her many famous children. She prefers to stay in the shadows, watching, guiding. “Something evil, grasping. It lies within his heart, like an ugly worm within a wholesome fruit. It is… reaching, _taking_. It feeds on his powers, the very force of his life. He is neither dead nor alive. But I fear if it is left to feed, it will eventually consume him.”

“What must be done?” Father’s voice is immediate, firm. 

_ Whoa, slow down there sire. You almost sound like you… care. _

“It must be cut out of him. Removed, root and branch, and cast into the fires of Asphodel.”

“Should I fetch Achilles, Lord Hades? Or Megaera, perhaps?” suggests Hypnos, voice subdued. “To remove the evil?”

“And have another butcher him while I watch?” Zagreus is surprised at the venom in his father’s tone. “Bring me a blade.”

_ Do you undertake this because of your pride? Or mine? Or… oh, as if there could be any other reason. _

A blade is found, Hypnos bringing it like a servant.

“You could not have found a sharper?” asks Father, and Zagreus can imagine Hypnos squirming, folding himself into his thick red robes. 

“It belonged to Heracles once, Lord. I thought… for luck.”

“Pah.” 

Zagreus feels the cold steel at his breast, the point resting briefly against his flesh. _Why do you hesitate, Father?_

“If you are wrong, Nyx, I will cast you into Tartarus myself.”

Zagreus hates it when they fight, squabbling like the old couple he so long believed them to be. But he’s never heard them fight over him before. And he’s never heard Father sound quite so convincing before. 

The Lord of the Underworld drives the blade in hard and deep, cleaving Zagreus’ chest open with the expertise of long, long practice. He slices through flesh and bone, the sensation hollowing like a melon being scooped open. His heart is laid bare, all knotty muscle and great vessels, the feel of air on its surface unsettling. And then the dagger is tearing into that, too, ripping the organ open and exposing the ugly festering mess inside it. He hears his father curse, thunderous words that boom through his chamber, blackening the air. 

He reaches in with his very hand and grasps the twining roots, rips it from Zagreus’ flesh as though excising a cancer. Zagreus feels it the moment he is free of the cursed seed; his life flutters through his veins, red blood pumping out of his torn heart and pooling in his broken chest. 

It _hurts_ , pain flooding in with life, and it’s ironic because just as he comes alive again he’s dying, hot blood in his chest/lungs/mouth, hot as the Styx where he’ll soon be returning. In saving him Father has killed him once more, although what’s one death between family? 

There’s a heavy hand on his head, turning him so he doesn’t choke in the blood that’s foaming up through his throat – _Surprisingly kind of you, Father!_

In the last moments before death takes him once more, Zagreus’ eyes open. His sight is already dimming, his room dark at the corners. But he sees clearly his lord father bending over him. Sees the fear stamped across his face, plain as the day Zagreus has never known. 

_ You – oh. Oh.  _

And then, unhelpfully, he dies. 

***

Zagreus has no sense of time passing while he’s dead, so when he once again washes up at the House of Hades – this time awake and alive – he doesn’t know how long it’s been since Father sliced the cursed seed out of his heart. He drags himself out of the river’s current, up the steps and into the long hallway. 

“Zagreus! Good to see you!” Hypnos is all smiles as always, cheerful and chatty. Just a little too cheery; Zagreus doesn’t remark on it. “Lookin’ good, mister. Got a nice spring in your step, there.”

“I wish I could say it’s good to be back,” replies Zagreus. “But it’s good to see you too, Hypnos.” 

“Hey, maybe take it easy on your lord father,” says Hypnos as he passes. 

“Why? Has something happened?” Best for all concerned if he plays dumb, he thinks. 

“What? No! No. He just has a lot on his plate, you know?”

“When doesn’t he?” replies Zagreus dryly. He marches past Hypnos and to the immense cedarwood desk at the end of the hall. His father is reading parchment, as always, quill in hand. “Father, I’m back.”

“So I can see. Is there some particular reason I should care about your return? Are you abandoning your foolish quest and coming back to pick up your responsibilities?”

“No. Certainly not. I simply came to say…” _Came to say what? Thanks for carving me open like a divine sacrifice? No worries about pretending to be indifferent to me for all these years? I’ve seen the tenderness in you – do not pretend otherwise?_

“Yes?” drawls Father without looking up.

“I’m leaving to find my future. Not flee my past,” he says. 

Father looks up, jet black eyes shining. “I see.”

“Right. So with that out of the way, I’ll just get back to it, shall I?” He turns towards his room, and the passageway to Tartarus that lies within it. 

“You shan’t escape, boy. You are a son of Hades, and Hades is where you belong.”

“My birthright makes me strong. But I decide what purpose to put that strength towards. Goodbye, Father.”

He walks away, not expecting an answer, used to the coldness of his father’s disregard.

“Goodbye,” says Father, for the first time.

END


End file.
